Saturday, 7 February 2015

Ed Miliband tells tax havens to open their books in six months - or face being blacklisted

Ed Miliband tells tax havens to open their books in six months - or face being blacklisted

Ed Miliband has warned the tax havens costing British families and businesses billions of pounds that they will have just six months to put their house in order and open their books - or face being placed on an international blacklist.

Despite David Cameron boasting more than 18 months ago that he had forced tax havens to open up, not one of the tax havens linked to Britain as Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies have yet delivered on Cameron's promise that they would publish a register showing who owns the companies registered there – and some have explicitly refused to do so.

The lack of leadership shown by the UK government has frustrated and slowed the pace of reform on tax avoidance across the world.

There is nothing pro-business about defending tax avoidance. The United Kingdom has a responsibility to open up the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies which are held responsible for so much tax secrecy and avoidance. And it is costing everyone who relies on our schools, our hospitals, our roads and our railways. It is costing everyone who pays their fair share of taxes, including millions of British businesses.

In a letter to heads of government, Ed Miliband is today serving notice on them that that under the next Labour government they will have six months to publish publicly accessible central registers of beneficial ownership.

If they fail to meet this deadline, the next Labour government will withdraw the protection they get from international scrutiny and ask the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to place them on its tax haven blacklist.

Labour has set out a new plan for Britain's future, a plan that works for ordinary families, rewarding the hard work they do and saving the NHS they rely on.

The Tories can't build a better future for working people because they stand up only for a privileged few. With the NHS going backwards and a recovery which works just for a few, working people can't afford five more years of David Cameron.

You can't trust Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. They broke their promises and have been too weak to stand up to the Tories.

UKIP can't stand for working people: they're more Tory than the Tories, a party made up of Tory people, promoting Tory policies, bankrolled by Tory donors.

The Labour Party

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